Senate Democrats propose Section 230 reform bill to hold Big Tech ‘accountable’ for content.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-democrats-section-230-reform-big-tech

For a split second this headline gives one hope, “Wait, the Democrats are trying to hold their free-speech hating buddies in big tech accountable? How could that be?” Immediately we see the catch. The Democrats do not want to hold Big Tech accountable for their stifling of free speech, no, they want to force down an increase to that anti-American practice by imposing subjective standards policing content. These leftist Democrats seem to be going with their instinct to reduce freedom and increase control from the top. This case is worse than the usual arrangement where both conservatives and leftists see a problem of some sort and then immediately part ways when it comes to solving it. Here either side is not even seeing the same issue.

The leftists see the riot in D.C. as an opportunity, an excuse to satiate their hunger for increased government control and power. They say “Look at all the violence that happens when you let people rile each other up online! Don’t you want big daddy government to protect you?” Within the press release about their proposed reforms, it has the line “allowing victims to seek court orders where misuse of a provider’s services is likely to cause irreparable harm…” as well as others just as Orwellian. There is no need to worry once this is passed, since Warner, Hirono and Klobuchar will be on the job deciding exactly which sorts of speech to which to apply that ridiculously subjective standard. Good thing we have the democrats in power, with their godlike ability to root out speech that is “harmful”.

The conservative position on this topic is based on the principles of free speech and liberty. The problem here is not that speech needs to be policed more heavily from the top down. The problem is that speech is being policed too heavily by non-governmental organizations having insane amounts of power, and in an unbalanced, inconsistent fashion with no transparency. It is already illegal for someone to make direct threats online, so no thank you, we mostly do not need big daddy government’s increased protection from mean words. We need the government to fulfill its purpose, which is to protect the God-given rights of its citizens.

The Big Tech platforms are the new public square. They are de-facto governments executing their own regulations and “laws” upon those subject to their influence. There has already been precedent for the actions that the government must take here, back in 1946 in the Supreme Court case Marsh v. Alabama. There was a town owned by a shipbuilding company and that company wanted to deny certain speech on its sidewalks. Today we have the modern public square itself owned and controlled by a few Big Tech oligarchs who seek to do the same with today’s “sidewalks”. I couldn’t possibly say this better, so let me leave you with the words of Justice Hugo Black, “To act as good citizens they must be informed. In order to enable them to be properly informed their information must be uncensored. … When we balance the constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy freedom of press and religion, as we must here, we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferential position.” (Source: RealClearPolitics).